Sunday December 17, 2006 first ride with someone else
I am
just trying to tidy things up a bit on here. I got to head out with Pete Smith
who is one of my co-workers at Sky Care. He is actually my supervisor there. He
rides a Yamaha Star. Really pretty bike. If it wasn't for the fact it was
getting cold as heck and he was called into work because the lone part timer
(ME) didn't want to work. Pete lives in Leola Lancaster County. I highly
recommend riding in Lancaster County as I do Berks because it is less congested
than Pottstown or King of Prussia.
I only have three pictures to show from this trip. I headed out PA-23 from the Pottstown area which is a decent ride you have a lot of truck traffic to deal with but it does thin out the further west you go. New Holland is a neat little town. I didn't realize that they actually made the New Holland tractors there. Once I got to Pete's house, I of course had to stall my bike in the driveway. Always better to do something stupid where people can give you shit for it.
Pete and I headed down through Strasburg and over to Willow Street. I wanted to grab yet another Harley shirt for the collection. After leaving the Harley dealership we decided to take PA-272 straight down into Maryland. Pete knew I was looking to get down to see Elk Neck State Park in Cecil County, Maryland for a few weeks now. PA-272 started out with my least favorite milled road surface. This wouldn't be my first road surface surprise of the day. As we would say in the aviation world, the trip was uneventful with the exception of the occasional horse and buggy. Try and respect the Amish way of life as much as I can by keeping the bike quiet as I pass them. Not that my Sportster with stock pipes is that loud anyway. The only issue I have with the Horse and Buggies is the damn people in cars. It always seems like one person with out of state tags has to take a picture, wait and see if the horse will shit, or well, I don't know what they think is going to happen.
Once into Maryland the road surface improved and the ride went smoothly. Went through the town of North East. Nice town with a shopping district that could be walked. Looks like it would be a great night out if it weren't 90 minutes from my house. Once into the state park it was kind of difficult to figure out what was park and what wasn't there are several houses in the between portions of the park. I was hoping to get some photos of the bike in front of a lighthouse which is in the park. When we got to the end of the road there was a sign indicating you could hike .8 miles to the lighthouse. Well, not hiking with the bike and its too damn cold to walk it and we are running out of time as Pete has to work because I won't. So we snap a couple of pictures of the Chesapeake and turn around. Did I mention we are both running on reserve fuel at this point? The scenery where we did shoot the pictures is nice. Some very high cliffs, reminds me of pictures I have seen from Europe. I wanted to see the beach but it must have been in between those damn houses.
On the way back we stopped at a Sunoco at US-40 and RT-272. It was warm enough out that anyone who didn't have their bike stored or winterized yet seemed to be out. I actually saw Santa Claus and a female helper ride by but I didn't have the camera out to get it. The sun was setting so I told Pete I was going to split off and try and direct route to get home before it got dark. I don't have my full motorcycle license yet so I am not legal to ride after sunset. I rode the US-1 bypass north from Nottingham up to PA-82. I am all about waving to people on motorcycles, but not when I am doing 75 m.p.h. on a road I have never ridden before. Sorry folks. PA-82 was the longest "short cut" I think I could have taken. If you look at the map to the right I think I swung 5 miles in the wrong direction to get home. Such is life. I had warm gloves on and I wasn't in that much of a hurry. Once through Coatesville I was pretty familiar with the roadway since I head to the hospital that way. I made it home shortly after 5pm and can say it was a good day.
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